Kingdom of Monsters by John Schneider (microsoft ebook reader .TXT) 📗

Shanna smiled back.  “And it escalated.  It always escalated.”

Rosa nodded.  It had.  At her house, What's-Worse often ended pitting mom's stew against plagues or mythological horrors.

“My father,” Shanna said, “was a scientist.  We were splitting atoms.  We'd be pitting thermonuclear destruction versus a nationwide pandemic of diarrhea.”  Shanna grinned.  “I mean we had global tsunamis versus planet-sized asteroids.”

Her grin faded a little.

“There's always something worse.”

The remark hung unexpectedly heavy, and Rosa felt her brief warm memory evaporate in the icy air.

“I wonder,” Shanna said, “if Otto listened.”

Now Rosa felt a touch of goose-flesh.

The chill seemed to blow through the others as well.  Both Allison and Bud shivered visibly, Allison unconsciously clutching Lucas tighter.  Even Mr. Wilson settled up closer to the fire.

The gusts of wind were becoming shrill and impatient, grabbing at the fire, pulling the licks of flame dangerously close, even as it threatened to snuff them out.

“He always said his name,” Shanna said.  “'My name is Otto'.  Always in my father's voice.  The first words he ever learned.”

She looked thoughtful.

“All of them did it.  The very second they hatched.  And after that, they all repeated it.  Regardless of generation.”

Shanna shrugged.  “I was young.  I never questioned.  All the Area 51 guys tossed it off as a weird little glitch.  No one ever imagined what that weird little glitch implied.”

She shook her head.  “I never did.”

Then her eyes narrowed.

“But I think,” she said, “my father might have.  Right near the end.  But by then, it was too late.”

The fire cracked loudly, sending a spark, and Rosa jumped.

A moment later, the spark was answered by a flash of lightning on the far horizon.  Two heartbeats followed before the corresponding rumble of thunder.

And somewhere, off in the near distance, something answered.

Mr. Wilson paused over the fire.  Allison slowed her steady rock.

“What was that?” Rosa asked, not wanting any kind of answer.

Shanna's eyes were shut, as if listening.

Rosa tried to hear, but now the rising wind brought the first sheets of rain, a curtain of icy sleet that slapped into the cliffside.

Drums of thunder echoed through the canyons.

Overture to the approaching storm.

Chapter 30

Three weeks after the island disaster, Kate was back at her Manhattan apartment.

It was official.  There was no Monster Island, and it never sank.

Her freedom was contingent on her clear understanding of that point – a message communicated bluntly from her father, through intermediate government lawyers, because he was still too goddamn mad to even directly speak to her.

As a General's daughter, Kate was afforded privilege.  The others were still in custody.  Cameron and Maverick hadn't even been given lawyers – not until security debriefing was completed.  Which meant until they were damn good and ready.

Kate's own lawyer had actually broken down into helpless laughter over the sheer length of the list of charges.

Suffice to say, everybody was in a lot of trouble.

Except for Shanna, who, to be fair, hadn't actually done anything.

But Gosh-darned if it didn't turn out, her father just loved Shanna.

When they had boarded the Navy vessel, after being fished out of the wrecked Cessna, the ship's captain, an old veteran named Brody, had greeted Kate on deck.  Kate's face was well known among officers.

“You've been at it again,” Captain Brody said.  “Your father's pissed-off on a national security-level this time.”

“Wait a minute,” Shanna said.  “Kate Rhodes?  You're General Rhodes' daughter?”

Kate's own brows raised.  “You know my father?”

Although, after a second's thought, she realized that was a no-brainer – of course, she did.  How could she not?

There was a brief reappraisal as the two women regarded each other.

Kate had grown up with top-level security as part of her daily life – a long-time point of resentment, dating back from when she was just a child and her father was her whole world, and ninety-nine percent of his life was an invisible black hole.

Shanna was one of the shadows that existed in that blank spot.  It was like finding out about a half-sister lovechild.

And here she'd thought her father had shut her investigation down just on general principals.

Kate wondered what was it like to live on the other side of all that top-security?  Shanna had no doubt grown up on a much tighter leash than even she had.  There was, after all, a difference between even a high-security military base, and Area 65,000,000 BC.

And while Shanna was not being charged with anything, she was no more free than Cameron and Maverick.  The difference was that instead of a risk, she was an asset.

The government had just lost its head mad scientist, and Shanna was heir-apparent.

Which meant everything Kate had seen on that island would continue to be real.

As far as she knew, all the animals had been killed.  The Navy had toured the area with munitions for days.  The island itself had been destroyed.

But they still had Shanna.  And who knew what they had stashed away in Area 51?

There were stories, Kate was discovering, scattered across the Internet, about not-quite-remote areas that had encountered strange creatures.

Crackpot stuff.  Most of it.  Except Kate had found her perimeters widened dramatically on what she was prepared to believe.

And there did seem to have been a rash of them just lately – as near as Kate could tell, dating back to an incident on a tropical Pacific cruise-liner.  When she searched the source, however, she found the websites scrubbed.

There was also the question of who had sent the e-mails to her in the first place.

Kate was beginning to wonder if it really had been Hinkle himself.

Like maybe there was something happening on that island he wanted the world to see, but for some reason, was afraid to step forward himself?

And what might he have to be afraid of?  He was an old man.  Kate couldn't confirm his exact age, but he had first started making waves in the sixties.  Shanna was young enough to be a granddaughter.

Shanna who, Kate mused, might have been the one Hinkle was really trying to protect.

But from what specifically?  The sort of